The anchorage in Bacchante Bay (49 27.118N 126 02.071W) is a deep bay surrounded by high forested hills with a river at its head. The entrance after a great half day of downwind light air sailing:

We had Bacchante to ourselves for 3 nights. The sun was out, the water in the bay was 20C and between the salty bay and the river we swam at least once a day. We’ve been living in swim suits and it has been great to have our swim ladder on the stern usable again. For those keeping track, we’re in Clayoquot Sound now – Hot Springs Cove is at the Northernmost tip of E Clayoquot. We’ll be heading to Tofino soon which is in W Clayoquot. This photo is from the mouth of the river looking back across the bay to the boat.

When you row up the river you can see the salt water influence fade. Here, lower near the bay there is still a lot of salt in the water and thus a lot of kelp. We spent the day exploring, finding and enjoying swimming holes and picking a bowl of berries.

Here, later, the water is mostly fresh and you can see there is just normal river growth. I’m scaling the slimy rock to get to some huckleberries. More dangerous than most sailing :)

Picking huckleberries (Livia) and checking the crab trap (Carol).

*A reminder for anyone who joined us here recently, logbook entries are for our own later enjoyment and tend to be photo dense and sometimes too wordy for a blog sound bite. Read at your own risk of boredom.

Hot Springs Cove is a bit of a landmark on the West Coast. Natural hot springs, owned by the province, reached by hiking 2k on a wooden boardwalk through old growth rainforest. Better yet, they are only reached by personal pleasure craft, water taxi or float plane. No roads. Here we are in mid-August with the place to ourselves (the first night we shared the harbor with 5 boats – this is our last evening).

First the hike – besides the natural beauty it has been a yachtie tradition to carve your boat name into the planks, a sort of high end graffiti. We have ideas for next year. We saw a few boat names from people we knew, more from the SSB nets and a few who are currently cruising the world but left from here (and we read their blogs).

The hot springs start with a waterfall and there are a succession of hot pools. When the tour boats are at the docks there wouldn’t be enough room to soak around all of the people but a morning or evening visit meant the place to ourselves or almost to ourselves.

Here are a selection of pictures of the hike and the hot springs including the beautiful wooden changing structure and the ocean view from the hot springs.

In one of our guidebooks I read a bit about examining the coastline of a bay to see what kind of extreme weather it gets. For example, if you see a lot of logs on shore, they were blown in by storms. Depending on which side they are on, you can get a sense of what types of storms charge into the bay. Similarly, in a densely forested bay you can look at the tree line to see if it grows all of the way to the high water mark, indicating a calm bay, or if it is higher on one side, indicating that that side gets pounded by surf.

Definitely a new favorite place. The bay itself is pretty if you ignore the clear cut sections (which we find ourselves having to do a lot up here) and calm. The star of the place, however, is the waterfalls. A short paddle up a river at the head of the bay leads to a beautiful waterfall.

The water below the falls is still salty, but above the waterfall, after a slightly sketchy climb up, is a freshwater swimming hole and a second falls. Above the second falls is another swimming hole and then a rocky shallow river.

I found a perfect Livia sized smooth rock bath tub in the first swimming hole. A little slice of heaven. I stayed until I raisined.

After an incident involving an ice cream cone in Tofino*, Carol finally couldn’t take the beard anymore. He promised himself he would make it two months and he did. He promised me that when he shaved his beard he would shave it into funny styles and let me take photos and he did that as well!

Full beard

Goatee Carol

Carol “Modern Abe Lincoln” aka “Grunge”

Clipper shaved but not razored

His razoredness

He made me the same promise about his hair – if he grows it out I get to shave it into interesting shapes whenever he decides to get rid of it :)

*A bit out of order I know. The blog is, by necessity, 2 or so weeks behind where we actually are. We've been in Tofino twice at the point that I uploaded this.

A protected anchorage with a friendly resident who came by and said hello and a “kayakers island” that is very pretty on two sides. Not enough to hold us around. We arrived late in the day after waiting out the fog prior to departing Rugged Point, spent a day paddling to the kayakers island and doing boat chores, and then left the next day for Mary’s Basin.

A few pictures from the picturesque kayaker’s island, starting with the usual – the rugged gorgeous coastline:

There are some places that inspire you to run naked through the surf into the Pacific Ocean. Rugged Point is one of those places.

The stunning beauty of the place is all on the South side which is too rough for anchoring. The anchorage on the North is quite pretty although fairly exposed. We ended up staying 2 nights – one mellow and calm, one rough and windy.

There is a short trail across the point which was loaded with huckleberries:

And then you arrive at beach after beach of white sand.

You can walk SE for quite a long way although we only walked for an hour or two.

Depending on the state of the tide there are trails that cut inland to bring you across to the next set of beaches often rigged with ropes.

Kayakers come to camp here and the tent pads are pretty nice. Tucked into the woods but with a view of the ocean.

Perhaps one of the reasons we go through so much propane (and why I am guessing our usage has only increased) is that we love to cook including a fair amount of baking. I grew up watching my Mom make bread and cinnamon rolls and Carol grew up watching his Mom make bread and meat pies of various kinds. Our recipe book:

I’m not a big catsup fan but for some reason salmon pie requires it – shown here with the last episode of “Band of Brothers” (THANK YOU Dave & Allison!!)

I had a big baking day when I used Marcelle's (Carol’s mother) recipe for bread to make an assortment of doughy delights. Dough pre and post-rising:

I took that huge amount of dough and made 2 small loaves of bread, 2 bread boules, a set of 8 salami-pesto rolls and a pizza. Pre-rise photo includes the pizza dough in a ziploc bag which can be kept in the fridge for a few days before using:

The salami-pesto rolls prior to slicing:

The finished products including the not-yet-baked pizza which never made it into the fridge: